웹기반 학습 환경을 활용한 실용영어와 인문소양의 계발

Cultivating Humanistic Capacity and Improving Practical English through Web-based Instruction

This paper attempts to explore the possibilities of cultivating humanistic capacity and improving practical English at the same time under web-based learning environment. To do this, Seminar in Screen English, a web-based graduate course designed to develop practical English, is closely examined to find ways to cultivate humanistic capacity. Each lecture of the course is composed of three different sections. The first section is a video lecture given for the students to acquire basic knowledge on the assigned topic of the week. To develop advanced reading abilities and logical thinking, critical papers are discussed in the second section. In the third section, watching the video clip, the students are supposed to fill out the blanks in the movie script. This section is designed primarily to develop practical English abilities of the students, but the students may cultivate literary competence by answering the short essay questions included in the Quiz. All the three sections are carefully planned to help cultivate humanistic capacities of the students. The various devices such as on-line discussion and peer reviewing process were expected to help enhance the humanistic capacities of the students, but it was not easy to overcome the limits of web-based instructions. Unlike face-to-face classroom instruction, most of the students in this course still felt that they did not have enough interaction with the educator. The bigger problem than this, however, was to change the attitude of the students toward “practical” English. The success of English education may depend on making the students understand what is really “practical”.